irits of the people moaning over their
losses, and had said nothing of the same, for fear of stirring up the
superstition of the black; for the best of them are no better than
superstitious niggers, my Lady; so I said nothing of what I had heard,
until he saw fit to broach the subject himself. Then we both turned-to to
listening with a will; and sure enough the groans began to take a human
sound. It was a good while, howsomever, before I could make up whether it
was any thing more than the complaining of the hulk itself; for you know,
my Lady, that a ship which is about to sink makes her lamentations just
like any other living thing."

"I do, I do," returned the governess, shuddering. "I have heard them, and
never will my memory lose the recollection of the sounds."

"Ay, I thought you might know something of the same, and solemn groans
they are: But, as the hulk kept rolling on the top of the sea, and no
further signs of her going down, I began to think it best to cut into her
abaft, in order to make sure that some miserable wretch had not been
caught in his hammock at the time she went over. Well, good will, and an
axe, soon let us into the secret of the moans."

"You found a child?"

"And its mother, my Lady. As good luck would have it, they were in a
birth on the weather-side and as yet the water had not reached them. But
pent air and hunger had nearly proved as bad as the brine. The lady was in
the agony when we got her out; and as to the boy, proud and strong as you
now see him there on yonder gun, my Lady, he was just so miserable, that
it was no small matter to make him swallow the drop of wine and water that
the Lord had left us, in order, as I have often thought since, to bring
him up to be, as he at this moment is, the pride of the ocean!"

"But, the mother?"

"The mother had given the only morsel of biscuit she had to the child, and
was dying, in order that the urchin might live. I never could get rightly
into the meaning of the thing, my Lady, why a woman, who is no better than
a Lascar in matters of strength, nor any better than a booby in respect of
courage, should be able to let go her hold of life in this quiet fashion,
when many a stout mariner would be fighting for each mouthful of air the
Lord might see fit to give. But there she was, white as the sail on which
the storm has long beaten, and limber as a pennant in a calm, with her
poor skinny arm around the lad, holding in her hand the very mout